Have You Seen Me Lately
by Chicleeblair
Summary: Jack never expects to go back to Cardiff, but the Rift has other plans. Now he's working for Torchwood again, under Gwen's efficient command. The changes in her fascinate him, but she won't let him near enough to discover their roots.
1. can you tell me what you see in me?

It was fitting, he supposed, that it all began again on the gritty cement of a Cardiff car park. This occurred to him later, when he had time on his hands to consider what transpired. All he was aware of at the time was searing pain and the smack of his body hitting the ground. He had the presence of mind to lift his head to stop the impact from knocking him out, but the person tacking him anticipated this and grabbed a handful of his luscious hair.

"Calm," growled his captor. "I dun' wanna hurt you. Just take it easy."

He recognized the voice. This meant that his captor was someone important, because he didn't have the best memory for voices. Faces, yes. Bodies. Tender spots. But voices, not so much. There were only a handful of men whom he considered memorable with London accents like that, and all of them were dead except—"Mickey Smith?" he said to the concrete, as he realized that if he were in the correct time, Mickey Smith should be dead too.

Instead of slacking, the pressure on his body was increased. "How'd you know that, then? Some kind of telekinesis? We've seen species that can read minds before."

"Mickey, I never understood why he called you 'the idiot', but it's me, you idiot. Jack."

"Jack? Jack who? The only Jack I know left here a long time ago."

"Yeah. That'd be me." Jack grunted.

"Jack Harkness?" Incredulity dripped from the two words, and Jack tried to think of some way to prove himself with his face smashed into the ground. Hurrying footsteps interrupted him.

"Jack Harkness? Mickey, let him up, let me see!"

"Now that voice I'd know anywhere. Voice of an angel, Martha Jones." Jack grinned, as Mickey's weight was lifted off of his back. He pushed up onto all fours to take stock, and then stood to brush himself off. The dust of two planets trickled into the air. His Sector Nine medi-bay uniform was stained and ripped, something that the supervisors would not approve of. He would not be seeing them anytime soon, he assumed. The universe made other plans.

"Oh my God, it is you! What the hell happened, Buster?" Martha exclaimed, shoving herself in between him and Mickey.

Jack glanced around at the empty car park, noting the still-familiar sound of the rain outside. "Would you mind if I asked the questions? I have a hunch this is weirder for me than you. When am I? Where am I?"

"Cardiff, April 25th 2013," she said, and he nodded.

He had assumed that it wasn't too terribly long after he left, since Martha hadn't changed, except that she was wearing her hair shorter. Plus, the pink shirt she wore under her jacket had the Olympic rings on it, putting him somewhere around 2012

"What are you two doing in Cardiff? Better yet, what am I doing in Cardiff?"

"Usual answer: Rift activity. I guess you fell through," Mickey said, stepping out from behind Martha. He was waving a scanner up and down in front of Jack. "Yeah, major Rift spike."

"I became Rift junk?" Jack said, with a chuckle. "That's fitting. Don't suppose you've learned to control the shifts enough to send me back?" Mickey shook his head, and Martha's face fell. "I'm kidding," he assured her. "I think."

Martha shook her head, "Oh Jack!" she said, abandoning the collected demeanour she had maintained, and throwing her arms around him. "It's so good to see you."

He squeezed her for a long moment. She still wore the same lilac perfume, and it brought back memories that made him want to laugh and cry simultaneously. "You too, Martha."

"All right, hands off." Mickey clasped a hand on Jack's shoulder. "Though, I _am _glad to see you, mate. She's mine. And as for us, we're--."

Echoing footsteps cut him off. Martha and Mickey closed ranks in front of him. They spun to face the entrance to the car park, leaving Jack to follow their gazes over their shoulders. A figure was coming up the ramp, walking steadily as if she had a plan, and she wasn't in a hurry. Jack knew that silhouette.

"Word to the wise," Mickey muttered to him. "No sudden movements from you."

"We're Torchwood," the woman finished, coming to a stop in front of them crossing her arms in front of her chest. "What do you two think you're doing? Move." With quick looks at Jack, they stepped aside. She stepped forward into the light to peer at him. "And who or what--?" She stopped, her eyes focusing on his face. He was a little shabbier than the last time she had seen him. His hair was longer, and he hadn't shaved in a few days; the medibay had been busy. Still, he hadn't aged more than a year or two in the years he had been gone. Of course, neither had she.

The clamouring rain was all he heard, aside from his own heavy breathing, as her face changed. Recognition had flashed in her eyes. After another breath this was followed by shock, and then her eyes narrowed. He was surprised for a moment, remembering her tears when he had left. On that hilltop, though, he sensed that she had been sure that he would return. Enough time must have passed to make her decide he would not. The emotion next to sadness was often anger. If anyone understood the connection between the two, it was Jack.

He bit his lip as her features formed into stone. A glance down was enough to revel that her hand had closed over the hilt of the gun at her belt.

"Look who fell through the Rift, Gwen," Martha said, stepping between them enough to block Gwen's aim were she to raise the gun. The false note in her voice reverberated against the walls. "What shall we do with him?"

Gwen's gaze did not leave Jack's face, and he had to clench his fist to resist the urge to feel his chin for a hole bored by the laser in her eyes. "That'll be up to you Martha, because if the decision were left up to me, I'd bloody well lock him in the vaults, and never let him out." Her voice was steady as she proclaimed this, and once the sentence was punctuated she spun on her heel. Her departing footsteps echoed as steadily on her way back to the street as they had when she approached.

Jack had not encountered many silences without being able to break them, but when the sounds of her boots disappeared he found that his throat had gone drier than the week he had spent wandering around a Saharan desert planet.

"Well," Mickey said, apparently less fazed than Jack, or perhaps less afraid of Gwen. "You can kip at ours, for tonight at least." Jack and Martha exchanged a look, and then turned to stare at him. He shrugged. "It's the only suggestion I've got."

"It's something at least," Martha agreed. She rested her hand gently on Jack's shoulder. "She'll come 'round, Jack. They've been a hard few years." He nodded, and followed them to the lone car in the car park. He was suddenly too tired to point out that only half of her statement sounded as though she believed what she said.

***

The dew coated him as thoroughly as it coated the grass, but he didn't stir. Maybe it was that trans-universal-temporal travel triggered the worst jetlag he had ever encountered, or the stiffness of Martha's couch, but insomnia had him in its clutches. He considered the streets of Cardiff, reacquainting himself with them, but instead he'd looked up the address in Martha's phone. He had begun his journey before the streetlamps turned off.

Now the birds were singing their hellos, and he opened his lungs to the air as much as he could, enjoying the heady scents that only a spring on Earth could produce. There were entire planets captured in never-ending _printemps_ that could not rival the perfume. He inhaled once more before his attention was stolen away from the flowers by movement behind the window that he had been staring at for hours. The curtain flickered an inch or so, and he braced himself, expecting to see Rhys Williams emerge in the doorway, armed with a rifle.

Wrong on both counts. The door opened, and Gwen stepped out, holding her handgun in a casual grasp, as though it were the coffee mug she would normally be clutching at this hour. As a matter of fact, her other hand did hold a coffee mug, which she sipped from. One eye remained focused on him steadily enough to aim and blow his brains out if she chose. Adding to the effect, she was still wrapped in her bright pink dressing gown, with her feet covered in matching bedroom slippers.

"When I taught you how to use that thing I wasn't anticipating this." The statuesque silence of her stare from the night before had not dissipated, and he continued, hoping to get a chink in. "I still can't die, Gwen."

"I imagined so, but I think it would be satisfying to lodge a bullet into your head over, and over, and over again."

He searched her words for pain, but all he detected was calm assuredness. That was the voice that came from hate. He despised himself for allowing the day to come when Gwen Cooper used that tone with him. "I've travelled for eons, Gwen," he said, ears straining for the sound of the gun being cocked. "Across the universe and through time. I flitted from planet to planet, drawing life from it like a bee drawing nectar from a flower, and then jumping to the next one without retuning to the hive. And just like a bee, the hive was calling to me. I've had lovers, Gwen. I've made mistakes. But Ianto and Steven's faces would never leave my mind. _Why them?_ I wondered._ Why that mistake_?"

She was still staring at him; she had not shot, nor had she gone back inside. He continued, hoping that pouring all of this out would scab over a wound it was too late to stitch closed.

"I saw the Doctor a few times. The version of him that'd be turning up in this year has some hair, I can tell you that." He smiled a little, feeling the way Perseus might have felt had he attempted to smile with confidence at the reflection of Medusa. "I saw your—our Doctor a few light-years from here. In a bar; it's a place where no Earth humans had got to yet."

"Oh, so there are other humans, are there?" she broke in.

He grinned at the look of wide-eyed doubt that bled through her frosted look. It was as though he were peeling paint from a canvas that had been painted over. He proceeded carefully, so as not to rip the print.

He had loved that look, had thrived on it from their first conversation at the bar. It was the gaze that made him want to show her everything magical about the world. And what had he done to her instead?

"Ever wonder what happened to Amelia Earhart?" he quipped.

The side of her mouth flicked up, a fraction of a centimetre, but it was enough to give him the self-assurance to lift one foot up and place it further forward on the ground. The dewy mud squelched under his boot, and they both looked down. The beat that passed made his heart sink. The air around them had grown cold again.

"So anyway, I'm there with this man who saved the Earth, and all I can think of are the other people I knew who had done the same thing. I wanted to come be with them again, with you again."

"But you didn't," she snapped. "You fell through the Rift. Huge difference."

"I know," he murmured. "I guess the universe was braver than I was."

She laughed, but it wasn't the deep chuckle he adored. It was a biting laugh, flowing from a deep vein of bitterness. "You believe in fate now, Jack? That's rich."

"Yeah, I do." He raised his voice, meeting her eyes and speaking firmly. "I do, and you wanna know why?"

"This'll be good." She crossed her arms, and he exhaled. The gun was pointed down to the step below her.

He swallowed. He didn't want her to take the dark journey into his emotions. He rarely did it himself; and, her eyes were devoid of the compassion he had hired her for, a compassion that once might have let him tell her this truth without feeling vulnerable. Sometime over the past millennia he had learned that maybe vulnerability was what he needed to show.

"Because believing in chaos is too damn frightening."

Their eyes locked after he said this. Time stopped; the birds went silent, and it was just them. He saw the decision she was making, traced her gaze as it flowed between him and the intact wrist-strap on his arm. After all the time, and no time at all, he still knew her better than anyone. He hung his head before she opened her mouth.

"It's not enough, Jack. I cannot just let you in again. Not if knowing everything you were avoiding was enough to keep you away from the damned hive."

As the door slammed behind her, he kicked himself for using such a stupid metaphor. He blamed the flowers that were beginning to bud on the bushes next to her front step. As he eyed them, a bee zipped in to nip from a partially open nasturtium.

***

"I'm not you, and you're not Ianto," she said the next morning, coming out of her house with a little boy in her arms.

The child watched him steadily, though except for that utterance his mother ignored this man in their garden. "Mummy, that's Uncle Jack. He in the pictures!" The boy pointed, obviously thinking that her mother had missed the unusual occurrence of pictures becoming alive.

"Yes sweetheart. But the man in the pictures is Good Uncle Jack. This isn't."

"Bad Jack?" the child asked, as Jack stepped forward, meeting the toddler's solemn black eyes.

"If your mother says so," he agreed. "What's your name, little man?" The boy buried his face in Gwen's shoulder.

"It's Evan," she answered.

"Another form of John? Like Owen, and Ianto." _And Jack_, he thought, but didn't say. "You're speaking to me," he added, turning his full attention to Gwen. She still had not looked directly at him, though she wasn't moving either.

"I was never not speaking to you. Not even when you weren't here. There were times over the years that I bloody well _prayed_ to you. You weren't there to listen." She threw open the back car door, and busied herself putting her hand bag down on the floor. She set the child down to climb in himself.

Jack looked up at the grey sky, and addressed it. "Well, I'm here now."

"And I'm done praying. What do you want?" She leaned into the car, fastening the boy into a child seat, and tenderly placing a stuffed rabbit in his lap. The boy kept gaping at Jack through the window once his door was closed.

"I want a reason to be here."

"So everything you missed so much isn't reason enough?" she demanded, leaning back against the car. Her eyes were fixed over his shoulder, squinting at the sun that rose at the edge of her street.

He stepped to the side, blocking her view of everything that wasn't him. "Everything I missed so much is dead, blown up, or treating me like I'm Satan taking on human form."

She finally looked at him, eyeing him up and down. He crossed his arms, aware that her penetrating stare made him far more nervous than he should, particularly because he knew that her reaction to his outfit would make or break him. He had taken a page out of Ianto's book and headed to the military surplus shop. He looked like his old self, and judging from the way Martha and Mickey avoided bringing her up in front of him, she wasn't too fond of his old self these days.

She settled her gaze on his face, and cocked her head to give the impression of an innocent questioner. "Aren't you?"

He sighed and tilted his head back with a scowl. She smirked.

"All right, I get it, you hate me. Just, give me a job, please, Gwen?"

"Oh, is Jack Harkness begging? That's a new one," she snapped, but she was jiggling her keys in her hand. The gesture meant that she was considering his words, even as she berated him. The day before he might have considered asking to be a formality, but their conversation demonstrated that showing up unannounced at the Hub would be a poor decision.

Martha had told him that Torchwood had just officially got funding back from the crown, after the time it had taken to clear out and rebuild the Hub. They were still shifting out of their temporary offices in an abandoned warehouse. Aside from herself and Mickey, Lois Habiba was the only other employee.

There was a time when Jack _was _Torchwood. Judging from the way she commanded Martha and Mickey in the car park, Gwen was now the face of his favorite secret organization. As such, she would have to put her personal feelings aside. If she could see that it would be mad _not_ to hire him, then it would show him that she could finally separate her heart from her work.

"Fine," she said steadying the keys. She reached behind her and threw open the passenger door. "Get in the car."

As he slid in, he admitted that the only thing that made him feel safe with her in the driver's seat was the happily babbling child behind him. She would not risk their lives with him there.

"Good Jack, Bad Jack," the child said, in a sing-song voice. "Man in the pictures, people in the pictures. Mummy and Daddy and Uncle Jack, and Uncle Ianto. People in pictures, people in pictures. Uncle Owen, Aunt Tosh, Uncle Ianto, Daddy, Good Jack, Bad Jack, people in pictures." For the entire ride to the crèche, the little kept up this chant. When he had been handed over to a teacher the rest of the ride to the Bay was silent, until they pulled up to the Millennium Centre.

Gwen parked the car, but when Jack pulled the door handle it wouldn't budge. He raised an eyebrow, but Gwen was facing forward so didn't see it. She stared out at the bay in front of them, watching a gull dive down out of view.

"There will be rules," she said. Jack crossed his arms, waiting for her decree. "If you hadn't noticed, you left an important position open in Torchwood. I'm in charge now, and not just bumbling along the way we did the first time you abandoned us. You're not to come in and think you can give orders left and right. You have seniority, but not over me.

"The others know what they're doing. Even Lois can hold her own, and you're not to go in condescending. In a pinch, defer to them unless it's something they haven't seen before and they ask for your opinion. Understand?"

Hesitation would be fatal, and he nodded. "I can work my way up the ranks," he assured her. Internally, he contended that two centuries of Torchwood would mean that he was more equipped to deal with anything than Lois Habiba, but he was willing to trust Martha. She had walked the Earth to search for answers too, after all. Even Mickey Smith had saved universes.

"You have a good team." The words escaped him as he considered their merit.

"Damn right," Gwen agreed. "Now let's go, before I think better of this."

The doors of the car unlocked with a click. Jack pulled on the door handle, but did not step out. "Hold on a second. You're piecing together a team to rebuild this place, why not get Rhys on board?"

Gwen pushed her own door open, and swung one leg out before stopping to glare at him. "I did," she said, and then stood.

Curiosity washed over him, and if he was not so eager to become a member of Torchwood again he might have asked for more information. He assumed that either Rhys had not been cut out for the day-to-day work of Torchwood, or they had decided that one parent should have a mundane job to be around for Evan if anything happened. It was a wise choice, and one day he hoped to tell her that. At the moment, he had to get out of the car and catch up with her before she left him alone with the tourists wandering around the Centre.

Stepping out onto Roald Dahl Plass took his breath away. With each step his chest constricted a little more. His mind knew that he would not find piles of rubble, would not feel his body being torn into millions of pieces before blackness took over. He would not see the destruction that had been ravaged on the place that had been his home. He had tunnelled out so much of it himself, and his mark was on every piece of it. The knowledge that an outsider had destroyed it haunted him almost as much as any of the rest of it when he slept.

He had never even seen the rubble, and had been there when the Hub was present far less than when it wasn't. It didn't make sense that he was having this visceral reaction to going back. He supposed that that was what thousands of years of seeing it in his mind's eye did.

Gwen still didn't speak, but she kept in step with him, even though each movement of his foot felt like dragging lead across the pavement. She led him to the emergency lift, rather than the tourist information entrance. He thought that she did not want him to have to see someone else at Ianto's desk, but maybe he only wished this was her reasoning.

He also wished his last association to this lift were not of sending her away.

The new Hub was impressive in its similarities to the old one, as well as its differences. There was a cleaner, more efficient feel to it. There were charts on the walls, and rotas. There were also sticky notes with messages written on them, and several prominently displayed drawings signed by Evan. The medical bay was in the same place, with several more cabinets of instruments surrounding it, and a lift labeled "morgue lift" off to the side. There were signs pointing to "archives" "vaults" and "toilets", and in one corner a collage of photographs. "Never Forget" said a banner above them, in Gwen's careful handwriting.

"All right?"

He was so busy absorbing the sights that it took him a second to realize that she had addressed him in a tone that could almost be considered caring, if one squinted. By the time he heard it, she had stepped off the stone and strolled into the room. Mickey and Martha, who were at desks facing them, were both gawping at them in disbelief.

"Martha? Show Jack around; tell him about the new stuff. Asylum and all that. Then put him to work sorting out the junk pile. He has a good eye for alien shite. I'll be upstairs reading through the report we got from UNIT last night, hoping against hope that it explains their stupidity."

"All right," Martha said, standing up and watching Gwen's retreat warily. "Did she shoot you yet?" she demanded of Jack, when they had heard a door closing upstairs.

"Not yet," he said dryly. "Give her time. What's Asylum? We had a policy called that just before I left, but--."

"It's Gwen's brainchild," Martha explained, coming around the desk to lean on it while she spoke. "While they were rebuilding the Hub she needed more to do than try and recruit us, so she began it. Basically, we run a halfway house and rehabilitation program to integrate aliens into Earth society. The Rift has been going mad, and we've had a fair few landings that haven't been violent, so haven't violated the treaty the Doctor helped UNIT forge when it became clear that it was time for Earth to become a universally-aware planet. Gwen was in on it, and convinced them to fund Asylum Agencies all over the UK. We run the Cardiff branch, and have ties with similar programs all over the globe. It's truly incredible."

Jack looked up to the second level of the Hub. There were still glass walls boxing in the upstairs offices, and he could see Gwen leafing through a print-out. Her boots were propped on the desk, and she leaned back in a self-assured fashion he once would have associated with himself.

So she still had that compassion after all. Towards aliens, at least. He wondered what had left her so cold towards humans.

Maybe not all humans, he considered, as Martha waved at him to follow her across the Hub. Maybe just him.


	2. what you see is what I used to be

His job became not unlike the job he had held when he began at Torchwood. They sent him to investigate Rift activity before calling the others in if it proved necessary. Since there was so much to do now the whole team rarely went out. In spite of this, there was not a lack of camaraderie. The three others were incredibly close; he assumed from the effort it took to rebuild Torchwood from scratch. He was often relegated to organising the archives and testing out possibly dangerous machinery, but he gained rapport with Lois, Mickey and Martha. They went out for drinks sometimes after Gwen had gone back to hearth and home. She never joined them, and he admired the fact that she had learned to separate work and family. Having a child to keep her husband from nagging during work hours, and to go home to every night lest she miss milestones had finally achieved what his lectures on not losing her grip never could.

Maybe because of this distance on missions and outings that Gwen was in charge of, it was obvious that he was being punished, even if he spent evenings bantering with the underlings. He was the soldier sent into No Man's Land, and the few times he died between April and August he always awoke to her standing over him with a satisfied smirk that chilled him to the bone. She did not grow warmer with the weather.

He couldn't discern the reason for her enmity towards him, and no one discussed it. Martha gave him sympathetic looks when Gwen censured him, but avoided his questions. Gwen had become the enigmatic leader of Torchwood: elusive because of her responsibilities to Evan, and so effective that her every order was followed with only rare second-guessing. He had seen Torchwood operatives change over time. They grew harder, more aware of the dangers of the world. Gwen had begun to do this when the 456 appeared, but there was something else underlying this alteration. He tried to let go of his curiosity when she began giving him more responsibility, admitting to himself that she wasn't shunning him professionally. She just refused to acknowledge his humanity. This was not helpful, when he had convinced himself that he was human only in the past decade.

He had to admit that she had become amazing at what she did. With every successful catch he felt a thrill of pride in the woman that she had become, but every time he smiled at her the happiness on her face would evaporate. After he saw this pattern, he banished himself to vaults and bounty hunting more and more.

Despite his self-decided exile, he was determined to believe that her anger wouldn't last forever, and in late August he had a spark of hope. They had been tracing a shape-shifting serial killer that the police were convinced were the work of different killers. Four murders had passed under their radars, the fifth had gotten PC Andy to telephone Gwen, and Torchwood had caught the culprit while he was attempting a sixth.

"Their faces when he changed in the cell!" Jack crowed as he and Gwen emerged from the police station, the handcuffed and sedated prisoner between them.

"It's the same one they used to get when the coffee-maker broke." She laughed, opened the door to the Torchwood Transport Van, and helped him load the alien in. "You'd think having a half-alien receptionist would give them some idea of the wideness of the world."

"Freda's your first Asylum success; you should be proud."

"I am." A satisfied smile shone on her face, and even reached her eyes. It made him realize how rarely she smiled these days, at least around him; seeing it was like capturing a shooting star.

"Come on," she said, pushing her hair behind her ears. "I'll buy you a coffee."

It wasn't much, he thought when she handed him the cardboard cup, but it was better than a bullet in the head.

Early on a September morning, they arrived at the Hub at the same time. Instead of avoiding his gaze and shooting orders at him, she stopped him. The hand that she thrust out held a coffee, which he took. He resisted the instinctual sniff for poison. She watched his face as he sipped, and then looked over at the wall of photographs. "If you need the day off, Jack, I understand."

He followed her gaze to a picture of the old team, the five of them grinning, spread about the Hub as Rhys took the photo. He was glad for the first time that all the travelling, and all the attempts to numb the pain had not erased it; callousness in the face of this date would shut her off again. "I'll be all right," he said, turning away from the pull of Ianto's small smile. "Isn't it just a day?"

"I wish," she said, with a small shake of the head. She took a long drag on her own coffee. "It's a fucking bank holiday. The end of the 456. I'm required by law to give the others the day off."

"We're outside the government," he pointed out.

She shrugged. "Yeah, but I try to make good with them occasionally. Besides, Lois's family always likes to see her today, make sure she's not 'wrapped up in any more of that alien stuff.' I'd have told you, but I didn't think you'd want to be on those streets."

He raised his coffee in a small toast. "You're right," he said.

She nodded once more, observing him. She bit her lip, as she did before she spoke, but she took the time to think about what she was about to do and turned away. He wished for her old impulsiveness.

She crossed the room to put her handbag down. "Have you seen her, Jack?" she asked,

pulling a pack of papers out of the bag.

"I stood outside her house a few times. She's lonely, but she seems to be doing all right. There's nothing I can do to help her."

"I doubt she's all right," Gwen countered. "And you can always do something for people."

He set his coffee down on Mickey's desk, and walked over to her. He reached out a hand to put it on her arm, but kept it hovering in the air, not daring to rest any weight on her. She bore enough on her shoulders. If he hadn't left, he would have carried it, and she would not know what it truly was to be in charge of Torchwood. Maybe this was why she hated him.

"What can I do for you?" he asked.

She turned her head, and that movement seemed to propel them through time. The air, always so filled with the debris of mistakes, cleared. "There was a time when all I wanted from you was for you to come back."

"I did," he said.

"You did," she echoed, for once not arguing against his agency in the decision. He listened to her inhale deeply, and he wondered if his scent had changed. He didn't know enough about his own pheromones to tell. Then the ground shook, and the tremor caused Gwen to fall back against him. A Rift alarm went off, but it seemed to belong to a plane that they did not inhabit.

"What can I do for you now?" he asked, his heart beating against the back of her head.

She was silent, and he looked down. Her eyes were closed. He let his hand fall onto her shoulder, finally, and she reached up, pulling it down so that he embraced her. "Oh Jack," she murmured. "I--."

What she was about to say was cut off by a louder siren: one that broke through the mist that surrounded them. Gwen pulled away, and left his arm hanging in midair. "That's the alien detection siren," she said. The statement was unnecessary, since he had learned that in his first week back, but she seemed to need something to say. "You can go find out what's going on and track it down for me." She smiled, in a wistful way that made him wonder if she thought the chance was gone.

"Will do," he said. "Now, what do you say you leave Evan with your parents and you and I take Rhys out for an anniversary drink tonight, in Ianto's honour?"

"Can't," she said, after a long pause. "Promised Mum we'd stay in Swansea tonight. Come on then, let's do it." She ran off towards her office, leaving him to check the monitors. He did not know why it was obviously the wrong thing to say, except that maybe it was too soon. Rhys Williams had not tracked him down with a gun, but he hadn't seen him either. He figured that Gwen cared enough about his skill to protect him from Rhys's vengeance by not telling her husband that Jack had returned. He'd also assumed already that Gwen's hatred would have fed into the distrust Rhys already had for him. Still, it was a day to forget all of that, wasn't it?

They worked independently of each other for the rest of the day, tracking down six alien eggs that had been sent through the Rift, and delivering them to the Asylum for protection.

It was late that night, as they were both leaving when they came together again, silently standing in front of the memorial wall. "All I can say, Gwen," he murmured. "Is that if it had to happen, you've done better than I ever could rebuilding this place. You added more to Torchwood than I dreamed anyone would."

"Yeah. Well, we'll never know what you could have done, will we Jack?" She paused, and he waited for another barb. Since he could not see her face, he was surprised by her next words. "No… I'm sorry. Losing people affects us all differently. I… well I don't understand, but… but maybe I should stop jabbing at you, eh? You're handy to have around these days. Good at catching aliens."

"An alien catcher, that's me," Jack said, grinning. She turned and smiled back. The smile was, for a second, achingly familiar. Then she passed him, heading for the lift.

"Good night," she called, stepping through the new cog door. He nodded, echoed her words as the door closed. When her turned back to the wall, the picture of Ianto was staring at him. "A good night indeed, isn't it love?" he asked it, and then turned away to go finish his report. The last thing he needed was for to have a reason to think better of her words, and chew him out the next day.

***

The night scene in Cardiff was not one he had frequented before. When he had lived here, he had spent his nights watching monitors in the Hub, never drinking or dancing. He was always alert, always vigilant. First for the Doctor, and then to protect his city, but now it was not yet his city again and his Doctor was gone. So, some nights he went to nightclubs, danced with pretty women and handsome men; he let himself enjoy a part of Cardiff that beat like the heart of the underground of the city. Torchwood, he liked to imagine, were its white blood cells, protecting the heart from malicious intruders.

On a chilly night in late October, he was relaxing at one of his favourite bars in the Bay. Mickey and Martha were watching the monitors, or whatever it was they did when left alone at the Hub. Lois was filing in the archives, and Gwen had gone home to Evan and Rhys at five, as she always did.

At least, that was what he thought that Gwen had done, but there was a very familiar head of black hair hunched over a glass at the bar. He wove through the crowd, ignoring the "come hither" look from a particularly attractive drag queen whose company he often enjoyed. If this wasn't Gwen after all, then he might consider taking Emilia home for a bit of fun.

Another step, though, proved his suspicions right. There was no mistaking the grace of her neck as it tilted back to down a potent looking blue drink. When she smacked the glass down on the bar, the reverberations went up through her arm, and she wobbled dangerously on her bar stool. He ignored the distance that they had been keeping and put his arm around her back to steady her.

"Gwen Cooper, fancy meeting you here," he said with a grin, over-enunciating to make up for the unfocused look in her eyes.

"Jack!" she exclaimed, with a wide grin. She reached up and put her arms around him, the amnesia of alcohol eliminating her anger. Even though he was wracking his brains to figure out what had her in this state, he wished that this forgetfulness would become permanent. Maybe this form of retcon would work on her.

"It's me," he agreed when she pulled back. She nodded, distractedly signalling the barkeep for another drink. The man made eye contact with Jack, who shrugged.

"I," she announced, taking the drink that was handed to her. "Am _very_ drunk."

"You are," he agreed, taking the glass from her and putting it to his lips. He swallowed half of it in one gulp and winced, not from the alcohol but from the realisation of just how much alcohol was in it. Gwen would indeed be _very_ drunk.

"I haven't been this drunk in, oh, ages an' ages. Three ages, I suppose. Evan is three ages old."

"Three years old?" Jack suggested. "And I don't remember you getting that drunk since before Owen and Tosh…" He trailed off as the smile slid off of Gwen's face, and she blinked rapidly. Her eyes were dry, but he thought that with that amount of alcohol in her body there couldn't be much moisture. "So we've established, it's been quite some time since you've been this drunk," he said, hurriedly to change the subject.

"Aye, yeah," Gwen agreed, her head lolling a little. She reached to her side for the glass, and he purposefully moved it with each grab she made. After three such manoeuvres, she gave up. "Jack?" she whispered. Her head bobbed a moment more, and then fell against his chest. "Think I need to go home."

"I'll take you," he assured her, putting his arms around her shoulders. "I'll do whatever you need me to do."

She murmured, and nodded against his shirt. She rested there as he settled her bill with the barkeep, and looked up blearily when he told her that it was time to go, as though she might have fallen asleep for a moment. "Ready, sweetheart?" he said gently, pushing her off of the stool. She wobbled again when her feet hit the floor. "Do you have a coat?"

"Don't remember."

He glanced around, but didn't see one. "Hey mate," he called to the barkeep. "Did she have a coat?"

The man looked up from washing glasses. "That one? She's been here since before I came on shift. I didn't see one, though."

"Thanks. Who let you go out in the cold dressed like that?" he asked, wrapping his coat around the shoulders that her tank top left bare. Her eyes clouded over with something that looked like confusion, and fear, but he couldn't tell why. "It's okay," he soothed. "Let's go, all right?"

He led her through the room, balancing her as they climbed the stairs to street level. On the pavement she stopped, looking around as though she had to make sure she knew where they were. "How long, Jack?"

"How long what, sweetheart?" he asked, gently pushing her arm so that she would walk forward. He wanted to get her closer to home before that last drink hit.

"How long have you been walking women through the streets of Cardiff?"

"Since before you were born, and since before you were born again."

"Sounds like a nursery rhyme."

"You're such a mother."

She snorted. "And some example I am now. How twice?"

"I came to Cardiff a long time ago, in my first life. I was a conman during the war. It's where I took on Jack Harkness's name. I met Estelle then. We would walk these very streets after dances, still with music in our heads."

"Sounds nice," she said, resting her head against his shoulder. "How did you dance, Jack?"

He looked down at the dreamy smile on her face, and decided to humour her. She might hate him again tomorrow, but he would hold onto this memory. "Like this," he said, shuffling a little. She was leaning so heavily on him that she had to follow step. He propelled them left and right, kicking his feet up a little. "Ba bum, ba bum, ba buh duh duh dum dum," he sang.

She giggled, unsteadily moving with him, allowing him to turn her with his hand firmly on her back to keep her upright. His coat flowed out behind her, looking like the skirts of which the women he had danced with once-upon-a-time had been so proud. The streetlamp next to them was a spotlight, casting her in a glow that he had once seen her emit on her own. Her eyes were brighter than he had seen since he returned.

"The girls' dresses would swirl, and the boys shoes would tap," he narrated as she twirled. He pulled her back against him, leaning to the side to dip, his hand firmly on her side. He felt her ribs underneath his fingers, and realised that he hadn't noticed how much weight she had lost. "And everyone would forget that we might die within days, within hours as the blitz sirens sounded."

"Forgetting is good," Gwen said, huskily as he turned her back so that her hand rested on his chest, her eyelids drooping as she thought about it. He tilted her chin up, staring into her half-closed eyes.

"It is," he agreed, studying her. "What do you have to forget, Gwen Cooper?"

She frowned, lines appearing between her eyes. "So much, Jack," she whispered. Then she clamped her mouth shut, and pulled away from him, doubling over and retching into a fortuitously-placed bin.

"And there's that last drink," Jack declared, putting his hands on her heaving shoulders. "It's okay, sweetheart, I've still got you."

Gwen moaned and leaned back against him. "Sorry, Jack," she murmured, her breath hot on his neck.

"No, I'm sorry," he replied. "So sorry." He didn't think she heard him; she had leaned forward again, dry heaving into the bin. He smoothed her hair back from her face and waited. He had become very skilled at waiting.

Once her stomach settled, he supported her the rest of the way to her house. Her keys were clipped to the belt loop of her jeans, and though she fumbled with the clip she detached them for him to open the door. When he followed her into the foyer, the darkness of the house threatened to overwhelm them both. He fumbled for a light switch, before finally clicking on the dim entry light. Gwen was staring at him, leaning against the door to a closet, her eyes wide with fear. She was biting her lip, looking around as if realising why she had never let him in the house before.

"Gwen?" he said slowly, looking at the coat rack that held a woman and child's coats. "Where's Rhys?"

She began laughing, and it chilled him more than the sarcastic bark she usually treated him to. It was her old laugh, bursting with amusement, but each breath was a short, fast intake, as though she was on the edge of hyperventilation. "They didn't tell you?" she demanded. "Those gossips we work with didn't share that bit of information?"

"No. They don't gossip to the bogeyman."

"Och, that's rich," she said, pressing both hands flat against the wooden door. "All this time you haven't known, and I thought you were just being callous." She regained control of her breathing and steadied. There was silence again, and he cast around for something to say, trying to read her and see what was coming. For once, he could not. The dim hall light was not strong enough to illuminate the past he had missed out on.

"Rhys is dead, Jack," Gwen said. Her words carefully articulated, as though a period came at the end of every syllable. The sentence hung in the air, repeating itself in his mind. Before he could respond, he had to take action. Gwen slid down the door, landing on the floor with her knees drawn up, and her arms splayed over them. He knelt next to her, putting his hands over hers.

"When?"

She stared up at him, blinking to focus on his face. "Two years ago today," she said, and then lost the battle with her body. Her eyes closed, and her forehead fell onto her arms. A second later, she snored softly.

"How the hell did I not know this?" Jack demanded of the world at large, before lifting her up to take her to bed. As he climbed the stairs, she curled against him. Her pale face was smooth and peaceful, as trusting in sleep as a child. Gwen had once been that trusting always, and it had taken away almost everything she loved, including him. He placed her on the bed sliding off her jeans and tucking her under the quilt. As he left the room, he noticed that the mattress was only indented on one side.

As he sank down onto her sofa, he remembered the first time Rhys had died. Gwen had been in hysterics, but even then she had cared for Jack. He supposed it was the next two years in Torchwood that had hardened her. The deaths they faced kept her from falling apart again, but they kept her from letting him in as well. He hoped that time had given him skills enough to regain the compassion he had once taken for granted.


	3. did you hear me mention you last week?

The next morning by the time Gwen awoke, he had scoured the house, throwing away takeaway cartons and old newspapers. Evan's toys had been put in their proper baskets, and he had a load of laundry on to wash. It wasn't that the house was dirty, but it was messy. It lacked the hand that Rhys had with housekeeping, and Jack would have noticed it if she had ever let him inside before this.

He had called Martha while Gwen slept, demanding to know why she had withheld vital information from him. She had answered the phone out of breath, but he didn't care what he was interrupting. He looked around the unfamiliar house, seeing only heartbreak that he had traipsed over for months.

"It was hers to tell," Martha said, unapologetically. "Especially to you. Your name was a curse to her by the time Mickey and I joined Torchwood. Only Lois knew exactly what had happened, and she's not about to reveal Gwen's secrets to you, she's so loyal to Gwen."

Jack wasn't sure what made a dead husband a secret, exactly. Still, he assumed that he deserved whatever Gwen thought of him. He should have put it together, anyway. The lack of present-tense mentions of Rhys, Gwen's almost silent mobile phone which used to ring three or four times a day and causd that smile that only Rhys could bring to her face. The sympathetic looks on the face of the police force, which he took for ignorance. He had been so focused on figuring out what he had done that he had not realized what she had been through.

With the knowledge of this, he tidied the house and waited. She emerged from the bedroom at half nine, her pink dressing gown wrapped protectively around her body. He sat on the sofa on which he had slept, watching her rest one hand on the wall as she navigated into the front room, squinting. Her hair was matted to the side of her face, and her eyes were shot with red.

"Couldn't close the blinds, could you?" she asked, collapsing into a chair. "It's bloody bright in here."

He leapt up to do so, casting them into shadow. She watched him, and he knew from the solemn gaze that she had forgotten nothing about the night before. "There you go. How d'you feel?"

To allow her time to consider her answer, he went into the kitchen to pour her mug of coffee.

"Like I got run over by a lorry, but that's the price, isn't it?" she said, curling up in the chair. The metaphor was a cloud in the air for a second, as he thought of the lorry driver whose presence, or lack thereof, haunted the house. "Anyway, thanks for seeing me home and all."

"No," he said, handing the full coffee mug down to her, and crossing the room to sit back on the sofa. "You're not just saying 'thank you' and going back to keeping me at the end of a hundred-metre stick."

"I suppose I can't, can I?" she murmured, sipping gingerly at the hot coffee. "I really did think you knew."

"I didn't," he assured her, leaning forward and clasping his hands. "If I had, Gwen--."

"If you had, I still would have treated you the way I did. I was so angry at you, Jack, and it's not as though you killed him."

He wanted to ask, but he knew he was standing at a precipice. One wrong move and he would fall of, never able to claw his way back into her life. There was silence as she sipped, and he looked over to a nearby bookshelf. There was a photograph there that had held his attention for part of the night. Gwen and Rhys stood in front of the house, baby Evan in Gwen's arms. They looked so happy, so hopeful. In the background of the shot, he saw a car in the drive with the Torchwood logo on its bonnet, dating the picture to not long before Rhys's death, if his guess was correct.

She followed his gaze, and sighed. "It was a fucking Weevil," she said, setting down the cup and looking away from the bookshelf, to the shielded window. She crossed her arms over her body, holding herself together. He wondered how long she had spent trying to keep from breaking.

"Lashed out at him in the night, like we weren't bloody Torchwood. I knew from Weevils; I'd seen them kill. It was always people that were expendable, I thought. I had begun to think like you, Jack. But Rhys, he wasn't expendable. We could have prevented it, but we didn't have the gear. We'd just started rebuilding, and I'm almost certain it was Janet. Driven from half-mad to all mad by the explosion.

"I couldn't blame her. All I could do was make sure we had Weevil detention facilities in the Asylum. I could blame you. I could blame you for not being there, for being the reason the Hub exploded and took the Weevil spray with it. For letting me tell Rhys, for keeping me from telling him for so long. For leaving and making us have to pull it together ourselves, when we had no bloody clue what we were doing. I could blame you for everything, and I did." She sighed, stretching her left hand out in front of her, and then resting her chin on her fist. Her wedding ring looked dull in the darkened room. He remembered the joy in her face when Rhys had first slid it on her finger.

"Since you weren't here, I could blame you and keep it all locked away. I could deal with his idiot friends coming over pissed on the day a week from now that they thought he died on, saying what a shame it was about the gas leak. I could even tolerate the one idiot who joked that it was fitting, Rhys always leaking gas himself." She shook her head, the corner of her mouth lifting a little. "He did have a point… but after a year they expect you to have moved on. When they see that you can function, and excel at your work, and your child is resilient and well adjusted, they stop worrying. You pretend like you're fine, and you don't have to face any of it."

"Eventually you get tired of doing that."

"Maybe. But before I could, you turned up. You turned up, and not only did I have to face the one that I blamed for the death of my husband, but I had to face the fact that I was wrong. There was no one to blame. That was terrifying, Jack. Utterly terrifying. So I shut you out."

"Not enough to mask your triumph when I died," he pointed out.

She smiled, but a red tinge came to her cheeks. "I did think you deserved it."

"I did."

"No." She shook her head, and turned to him, her certain gaze making him lean back in surprise. He was pretty sure that less than a month ago she would have heartily agreed. "No, not for that. Maybe… maybe for some things. But you've done penance, haven't you, Jack?"

"I have." She kept his eyes on him, and he sighed when he realised she wanted him to continue. This was finally going to be the moment when they shared the details of their separate pasts. He rather wished they were in the vaults with a Weevil to distract them as they had been the last time he came back to news about her and Rhys. "Well… I never told you where I was before this, did I?"

"I don't think I ever let you."

"True. I was working as a medic on a colony that had been at war with their home planet for generations. The soldiers, they came back with injuries that kept them in our bay for decades. For fifty years, I cared for the same people. And I felt more alive than I had in so long."

"And that's why you didn't come back?"

"Partially. There was never a good time to leave, never a time when I didn't feel as though I'd be abandoning them. I didn't want to be that person anymore. It was the Rift that made me face what a coward I was really being. Not abandoning someone else doesn't make up for the abandonment of the ones you love even more." She turned away at this, not ready to face that he still loved her, maybe. That he still wanted to be there for her. "I can take care of people now, Gwen. I learned. I learned that just because I'm immortal, people truly aren't expendable. I don't think I knew that before, even before the first time I ever died."

"So you want to take care of me now, is that it? Only, I don't need taking care of. I do the taking care. Of Evan, of Torchwood and of Asylum."

"Yes. You've done so well on your own."

"You're right, I have. Now, thanks for it all, but I do need to go rescue my mum from Evan. He'll be asking where I am every five minutes by now. I told her I had to work late last night, but I'd be there by ten." She stood, but it was too quick a movement, judging from the way she wavered until she reached out to put a reluctant hand on the back of the chair.

"I think that's a great idea," Jack said. "Never mind that you're currently as afraid of the light as Dracula. Driving to Swansea shouldn't be a problem. By the way, want me to make breakfast for you before you go? I make a lovely omele--."

"Don't say it," she snapped, thrusting her other hand out, palm flat to stop his words. Her face had lost any colour it gained while she was sitting. "Fine, you can take me to collect Evan, but I'll not be your charity case, Jack Harkness."

"No," he agreed, listening to her drag herself back up the stairs. "I'll be yours."

She slept through most of the drive, the window pushing her sunglasses askew. He woke her when they turned off the motorway so she could navigate them to her parents' house. As he turned through the lanes she pointed down, she cautiously removed the glasses, wincing, and ran her fingers through her hair.

"Am I presentable?" she asked.

He turned to her. Her hair was still flying away despite her ministrations, and her eyes were rimmed in shadows. There was also a bruise forming on her cheek that he had noticed when she came back downstairs dressed. She had examined it in the hall mirror before they left, and recalled an unfortunate incident involving a billiard cue while she searched for the toilet at the bar, before he arrived.

"You might want to stay in the car. Unless your parents think I assassinated Rhys?"

She pulled down the mirror over her seat, and winced at her reflection. "Good plan. No, they don't even know you left. They never ask about my work, they just keep Evan a few nights a month when I have to work late, and Deborah keeps him the others. Here, third on the left down this road."

They pulled up to a medium-sized house, with a well-kempt front garden. Jack got out and rapt on the front door. Soon the prim woman he had met at Gwen's wedding answered it.

"Mrs. Cooper? I don't know if you remember me, but--."

She squinted. She had met him once, not counting the retconned wedding, and he hoped this didn't trigger the hidden memories. If she were anything like her daughter, retcon wouldn't be surefire on her. "Captain Harkness?" she said, stepping forward. "Is everything all right? Is Gwen--?"

He stepped aside enough that she could see Gwen in the car. Gwen waved, and smiled. She just looked tired without the tell-tale dark glasses, from a distance at any rate. "She's fine. She had a bit of a long night, so I offered to drive her up here."

The woman's lips pursed, and she eyed him suspiciously. He thought Gwen might have to be subjected to getting out of the car after all, but then energetic footsteps came pounding down the hall.

"Uncle Jack!" Evan exclaimed, surprising Jack by jumping into his arms. "Takin' me home?" he asked.

"That's right," Jack agreed. "I drove your mum up here."

"It's a hard month for her," Gwen's mum acknowledged with a knowing sigh. "Particularly the next week or two. Tell her we're here if she needs us. And… well, make sure she gets enough water, won't you?"

Jack grinned. "I've forced it on her all morning," he assured her.

She smiled at him. "I'll get his bag," He kept grinning as she retreated up the stairs.

Evan pulled back, and looked over Jack's shoulder at the car where his mother sat. "Mummy here? Good Uncle Jack?"

"That's right," Jack repeated, swallowing hard at the thought of the child who had last called him Uncle Jack.

"Yay!" the little boy cried, clapping his hands. Then he stopped and put a finger to his lips. "Shh, Mummy sleepy."

"Perceptive kid," Jack murmured, accepting the bright green backpack Gwen's mother handed him. "See you later, Mrs. Cooper."

"Bye-bye, Nan-Nan!" Evan waved wildly as the door shut. "Hello, Uncle Jack."

"Hello, little man," Jack said, hefting the boy up on his hip. "Come on, let's see how many shades of green your mum turns when I tell her we're getting pizza when we get back to Cardiff."

"Pizza, pizza!" the boy cheered, his cheeks glowing pink with happiness. "Good Uncle Jack!"

Jack had opened the car door by this time, to load Evan into his child seat. "Mummy, pizza!" the child declared, not giving Jack the time to prepare Gwen for the announcement. As he'd assumed, Gwen immediately turned a shade of puce.

"And I had just decided you might not be related to Lucifer after all," she groaned as he climbed back into the driver's seat.

"I like to keep anyone from being able to draw definite conclusions about me. Drink your water. You'll feel better," he said. Evan giggled again, and Gwen rolled her eyes resignedly as they backed out of the drive.

***

April certainly was the cruellest month; Elliot had that right. At least, it was for Torchwood in 2014. The Rift seemed to be having a sale in time-jumps, and Elliot himself had been around to inform Jack about the violence of the month. The Asylum dormitories were full, and the amount of hostile visitors had Jack and Mickey in the field almost every day. Lois finally had to be trained in firearms, to her dismay, because they needed the extra help.

Still, a Wednesday near the end of the month found Jack leaning on the doorway of Gwen's office, waiting for her to look up so that he could grin at her.

"Why do you look like that cat that swallowed multiple canaries?" she asked, turning her desk chair towards her inbox.

"Because I'm taking you out tonight," he asserted.

She looked over her shoulder at him, and then back at the paperwork. "Are you mad?" she demanded. "Look at all this, Jack. It's been insane here, and the Home Office is demanding answers, as well as UNIT. Lois is at Asylum observing that little Rek'anian girl to make sure the green liquid she wets the bed with every night isn't poisonous, Mickey's still in Belfast and Martha--."

"Martha is watching Evan tonight," Jack cut in. "It'll be good practice for her; he'll have a cousin not too long from now. Come on Gwen, you know what tonight is, don't you?"

"Some feast day for a saint that's going to show up on our doorstep?"

"That was last week. No, Gwen, it's my anniversary. I came back—or got sent back—a year ago today, and we are going to celebrate."

She spun her chair around, facing him, with a small smile. "Really just a year? Feels like you've been back forever."

"A year," he repeated. "And six months since you stopped 'accidentally' shooting me on hunts."

She blushed. "That was once, and it was an accident."

"We've come too far for lies like that," he countered. "Now come on, I have a surprise or two up my sleeve."

"I hope we're not doing anything fancy. I look a mess, and I have nothing to wear."

"You look beautiful as always, and you have this." He brought the dress out from behind his back, and her jaw dropped.

"Jack it's gorgeous!"

"An Emma-Louise Cowell exclusive. Now go change. I'll be waiting."

She looked as though she might try to protest one more time, but the wine coloured dress held her gaze. After one more moment she stood, and took it from his hand, leaning up to kiss him swiftly on the cheek. He grinned and crossed his arms, revelling in the light her eyes had regained.

He was waiting on the ground level of the Hub to watch her descend the stairs. She did so self-consciously, and he knew how rare it had become for her to wear anything that revealed her body, or even to put her hair up. She was gorgeous. She appeared healthier now; maybe because he made it a point to get her to eat instead of just feeding Evan, as she had admitted happened more often than not.

"How do I look, Jack?" she asked, ducking her head so that her fringe hid her eyes.

"Now, you really want me to inflate your ego like that?" he teased. She swatted at him, but it got her to lift her head up with the confidence she was slowly regaining. She had seemed to exude it when he arrived, but he had come to see that it was only about her work, never about herself. "You look ravishing," he amended, and she grinned. "Now then, let's go." He offered her his arm, and she wrapped hers through it, allowing herself to be guided as they walked to the stone lift.

The weather had cooperated with his desires for once, and the sky was clear, giving the night a fresh and calm air. She kept his arm through his as they crossed the Plass, and couples passing smiled at them. "Where're we going?"

"Patience," he said, leading her around the side of the Centre to the car park Torchwood held space in. "Enjoy the ride."

"In your showy new car," she teased, as he opened her door for her. The entire team had mocked him for the purchase, but none of their new army of Torchwood SUVs were his, after all.

"Yes," he agreed, starting the engine. "You will have a night of style."

The drive was not far, but he made Gwen close her eyes as they approached. It was a mark of the trust he had regained that she obeyed, but he hurried around to her side of the car, lest she think better of it. As he helped her out he slid his hands over her eyes himself, guiding her forward until she was directly in front of the building.

The moment could not have been better executed. As he withdrew his hands, the doors opened for someone else, and music poured out onto the street. The new lights illuminated the entire block, and the red-white-and-blue banners fluttered crisply in the April breeze.

"So this is what you did with your spare time," Gwen murmured, turning to him with a delighted smile. "Harkness Dance Hall. Oh, real modest that."

"The board insisted on it," he retorted. "Since I fronted most of the money. I didn't have much else to do with it. Plus, I had to do something when you kicked me out of the Hub at night."

"Please, you found time to do something other than fix every faucet in my house?"

"They were all broken!"

It was a familiar banter. In reality, he came only when she asked, but that was most nights. Evan adored him. He would rather be tussling with the boy, or slowly prodding his mother out of her shell than anything else, but there were times that she retreated from him again. It was all part of the healing. He would wait to be called again, careful not to overstep his boundaries. While he waited, he planned this.

"It's lovely, Jack."

"It's even lovelier inside. Come on," he took her hand, and led her up the white steps to the door. Inside, they were transferred to another time. It was slightly eerie, with their knowledge of how active the Rift had been, but the women in contemporary gowns kept him from questioning when they were at least.

He showed Gwen around, grinning as she exclaimed at the little details. Then, once they had done the tour he led her onto the dance floor. She was hesitant at first, unsure of the steps, but he led her with confidence. "The trick to swing is that it's all about making the lady look good," he told her as he twirled her.

"You're good at that."

"I've had some practice," he conceded with a grin. "But you're pretty decent at making yourself look good."

She rolled her eyes. "I was a mess, Jack, you know that. I was too much of a mess to even see it. Now… I'm better. Happier. It still hurts, but… I can take pleasure in things.

"I thought I could before. I didn't see that I'd stopped doing things like dancing and enjoying life. Only Evan could make me smile, but I was constantly afraid for him."

He moved his arm out, twirling her under it. She smiled and tilted her head back. He watched her, wondering if at one of those dances he attended there was a Gwendolyn Cooper lurking in the back, smiling at the American soldiers. If there was, he decided spinning this Gwen back against him; she wouldn't have had half the spirit of the woman in his arms.

"Life can be frightening. I know what it's like, to stop living. Death does two things. Sometimes it shuts you off from the world, and sometimes it makes you more aware of it. That's why I loved this era so much." He gestured around the room. "It awakened them. Life became about living, for a short period of time."

"My life's about living again now," she murmured, as if realising it for herself. He grinned, ready to settle into the comfort that would follow the settling of the debris that had been swirling around them for so long. Instead she stopped dancing, horror on her face. Her hands tightened in his. "Jack, you're not leaving now, are you? That's not what this is about? Because I'm better now, you're not going to disappear? Because I can't take it again, Jack. I can't."

"Shh," he said, quickly, reaching up to press a finger to her lips. "No, Gwen. I'm sorry you still think I'd do that." He had forgotten that somewhere in there she was still a bird that had fallen from the nest more times than it had flown. "I'll be here for a long time."

"Okay," she breathed, letting out a shaky laugh. "I'm sure you think I'm a nutter, but--."

"Never," he cut her off. "Now come on, let's get a drink. Tonight we're allowed to be young and carefree."

"I dunno," she said, with a smile. "Mum told me not to drink with men thousands of years older than me."

"No offense to your mum," he said, guiding her to the red-velvet coated staircase. "But I doubt she ever dreamed that you would be out dancing with a man twenty years older than you, let alone thousands. Besides, I'm stuck at thirty-five, give or take."

"Oh, I'm gaining on you, am I? One day you'll be quite the child compared to me."

"I will, won't I?" he said, as they approached the bar. For a second he thought of Alice, and the way she resented his youth. Then he forced himself to stop the unpleasant thoughts, just has he has encouraged Gwen. Tonight was about celebration.

They danced until the hall closed, and then they spilled out onto the streets, reluctant to let the night end. So, Jack ducked into a Threshers and bought them a bottle of wine, and they made their way up to the roof of the Capital Tower, watching night turn into day.

"I came up here sometimes when you were gone," Gwen admitted, taking the bottle from him as they sat on the roof. Her shoes were deposited next to her, and she had wrapped the skirt of her dress over her bare legs. "To get air, and perspective over the city. It's my city, in a way that the others don't understand. It was a bit odd to have Torchwood staffed entirely with transplants."

"I'm a transplant."

She rolled her eyes, and gestured widely with the bottle. He took it before she spilled it. "You? You don't count. Cardiff is part of your blood. It's no wonder the Rift dragged you back."

"D'you think that's why?" he asked, looking up at the slowly disappearing stars.

"Why else would it?" she asked, resting her head on his shoulder. He put an arm around her, and she nestled closer to him.

"I can think of a few reasons," he said. She lifted her head up, and before either of them realised he was doing it, he leaned in and pressed his lips to hers. She pressed back. The kiss was hot, familiar and foreign all at once. It was a kiss of forgiveness, and of hope. He held her shoulders, his hands pressed firmly into her skin, to remind them both of his solidity.

When they broke apart, she looked away, her hair brushing his face. "I can't make promises, Jack. I'm not ready."

"I'm not asking for promises. I'm not asking for anything. I don't deserve anything."

She turned back, and reached up to run her fingertips over his cheeks. "Oh, Jack. When will you see? You deserve so much. You brought me back to life."

"I shouldn't have left you."

"No, but you did. It's all in the past now, so long ago. And I'm not pushing you away again. I just cannot promise you anything."

"No one can," he said. "Not when the universe, or the Rift, or something else bigger than us might have other plans."

"Such a Jack thing to say," she murmured, nestling against him again. "D'you remember what you said to me that morning in the front garden? About the bee?"

"Must you always remember my stupidity?"

"Of course. Well, I remember thinking how like you it was. To think you could just flit back here and suck us dry too. I didn't see that you'd learned to do the opposite."

"Maybe neither did I." He smiled, turning a lock of her hair around his fingers. He thought she had fallen asleep until she asked: "Jack?"

"Hmm?"

"I'm glad I stopped hating you."

He laughed. "Me too."

"Only, I don't think anyone could hate you forever. Not when you're right there."

"I could," he countered. "I could hate myself forever. I have to make the choice not to."

"Did you?" she whispered.

"Yeah." He paused and licked his lips. "Did you, Gwen? Make the choice not to hate yourself?"

She sat up a little, shocked maybe that he had called her on it. Then she slid back against the wall, hugging her knees to her chest once more. He let her think for a long time, until she finally nodded. "I think so. Sometimes… sometimes I can't stop it. Can't stop thinking that I could have prevented it. That I could have kept Evan from being half an orphan, kept Rhys's parents from losing their son, kept myself from becoming a widow. But… I think I have."

"I think you have too," he assured her, drawing her back against him. She smiled and let herself sleep against him. He stayed awake, watching the sky change as dawn approached. As the sun rose, an alarm sounded from the pocket of his coat, soon echoed by the phone buried in Gwen's clutch.

With sleepy murmurs, Gwen disentangled herself from his hold, and together they stood. "Let's save the Earth, shall we?" Jack asked, putting his arms around her.

She reached up, and held onto his arm. He held her tightly, remembering other mornings they had seen arrive on this same roof; the realisations they had come to together about the nature of the world as yet another day dawned, a day unknowingly indebted to them.

"Aye," she said, sliding her hand into his and letting her shoes dangle from the others. "And if we're not done by five, you get the one to tell Evan why he had to eat his Auntie Martha's cooking two nights in a row."

Jack grimaced. "When he's sixteen, we're hiring him as an interrogator," he declared, then winced in case Gwen had the same insistence as Lucia that no child of hers would join Torchwood. Instead, she turned to grin at him. "Maybe," she acknowledged. "But he'll have to stop promising biscuits to anyone who looks the remotest bit unhappy first."

Jack laughed, and flipped open his ringing phone. "Harkness."

"Major Rift activity, not far from you," Lois said. "Will it ever give us a rest?"

"Probably not," Jack acknowledged, sliding into the car. "It's okay. I owe that Rift more than I can say."

"You are such a romantic," Lois scoffed, and then hung up the phone.

Jack looked down at the phone, and then over at Gwen, who was sliding on her jeans under her dress. _If I am_, he thought, turning the car out of the car park and causing Gwen to swear at him. _I've damn well earned it. _


End file.
